Since Counterpoints Arts is located on Hoxton Street, we’re finding like-minded folks and complimentary projects happening just next door and up the road. Here’s a tiny sample of how the street and surrounding neighbourhood is being re-imagined through collective archiving, creative mapping, participatory arts, free learning, social justice education and much more.
Check out Dustin O’Hara’s most recent exhibit which opened last week at A. Brooks Gallery (194-196 Hoxton St) and runs from 4 April – 18 May. We recently met Dustin on Hoxton Street and look forward to working with him on our One Stop Doc, ‘Out of Place’ incubator. His approach to ‘experimental community archiving’ is truly unique, having already produced several fascinating projects based in and around Hoxton.
The most recent tells the story of the A. Brooks flower shop – a family-run business for 70 years. Now operating as a gallery, Dustin explores the role that the former flower shop played in the everyday life of the street in addition to the personal and collective memories/histories that underscore contemporary transformations within Hoxton and its wider neighbourhood.
Located just up the road in Rivington Place, Iniva are running a workshop at Hackney Community College as part of their ‘Mapping Language’ Project. ‘Mapping Language’ is a strand within Creative Mapping, a three-year learning initiative involving schools and colleges in East London.
And Iniva’s Social Archive 2 is also interesting where undocumentary film artists, Shiraz Bayjoo and Jessica Harrington, explore the diverse economies and cultures of Rivington Place’s locale in collaboration with the people who live and work in nearby Shoreditch.
We’ve missed the Hoxton Street Free Arts School for this year, but its an amazing initiative and is happening again next year, with some ongoing activities at the Peer Gallery on Hoxton Street. See here for the Free Art School.
And more from the Peer Gallery who run a dynamic participation programme.
A performance-based, street-related project with a difference and worth keeping an eye and ear to is ‘Mind the Justice Gap’ – a legal education project for young people. ‘Mind the Justice Gap’ are currently working on a website about the law and justice – as they put it ‘drawing directly on the experience of young people in schools and colleges in the borough’. They ran a session at Hackney Community College (13th March) on demystifying the law and knowing your legal rights.
